- Graham breaks with brother on nuking filibuster
Source: The Hill
“Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday broke with her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), over abolishing the filibuster three weeks after stepping in to finish the rest of his term. … ]This is where I differ from my brother, getting rid of the filibuster to get this done. Because eventually the Democrats are going to get rid of it anyway,’ she added, in reference to how Republicans should handle passing legislation to change voter registration requirements. Earlier this year, Lindsey Graham said lawmakers could consider nuking the filibuster in the future but warned against it in the short term.” (08/04/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6007377-nordone-breaks-lindsey-graham-stance
- Future of Crew Dragon weighs on commercial spaceflight industry
Source: Space News
“While SpaceX says there is a ‘significant’ amount of life left in its fleet of Crew Dragon spacecraft, the company has hedged on how long it will continue flying the spacecraft as it transitions to Starship. The upcoming Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station, scheduled for launch no earlier than Sept. 12, will be the second flight of this Crew Dragon spacecraft, called Grace, the newest of the fleet. Grace made its first flight last summer on the Ax-4 private astronaut mission to the ISS. Crew-13 will be SpaceX’s 18th human spaceflight mission to the ISS …. SpaceX does not plan to build additional Crew Dragon spacecraft beyond the five currently in service. While the spacecraft were originally certified for five missions each, the company has been working with NASA to extend the spacecraft lifetimes to up to 15 missions each.” (08/04/26)
https://spacenews.com/future-of-crew-dragon-weighs-on-commercial-spaceflight-industry/
- US federal judge blocks New York’s ban on ICE gang masking
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“A New York law banning US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [gang members] from wearing face coverings and requiring that they wear visible identification has been put on hold by a federal judge. But a state law prohibiting cooperation between local police departments and ICE has been allowed to stand. The mask ruling comes after federal judges have blocked similar laws in California, Virginia and Pennsylvania that sought to ban federal [gang members] from covering their faces. They are still required to wear agency [gang colors]. … The preliminary ruling means local police officers are blocked from arresting ICE [gang members] for covering their faces in public settings.” (08/04/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/04/judge-blocks-new-york-ban-ice-officers-masks
- Pilot caught with 70,000 ecstasy pills at Indonesian airport
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“CCTV footage released on Monday showed the moment a pilot was caught at Jakarta airport trying to smuggle 70,000 ecstasy pills in his suitcase. A group of officers at the airport can be seen removing several bags full of drugs – which amounted to around four stone (26kg) – from a silver suitcase. The man told authorities that he was paid the equivalent of £9,000 to smuggle the drugs. According to authorities, the Malaysian pilot was under the influence when he was arrested.” (08/04/26)
- World’s third-smallest country changes its name
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“The Pacific Island country of Nauru has changed its name to the Republic of Naoero, its president said, matching the spelling and pronunciation in the national language. The country’s international code will change from NRU to NRO and its people will be known as dei-Naoero instead of Nauruan. Commonly known abroad by the pronunciation of Now-roo, the new name is spoken as Now-ero. The move would return the remote South Pacific island nation to its traditional name, a statement posted Thursday to the government’s Facebook account said. The country became known internationally as Nauru only because its local name was difficult for foreigners to pronounce and was a matter of convenience rather than one of choice, according to an earlier government statement.” (08/04/26)
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/04/g-s1-137261/nauru-name-change
- Sri Lanka closes schools as floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rains kill 7
Source: SFGate
“Floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rains have left at least seven people dead in Sri Lanka ’s tea-growing mountainous regions, forcing the closure of some schools, officials said on Tuesday. Heavy downpours over the last two days have flooded homes, fields and roads in many parts of the country. The mountainous areas in the central region are the worst hit, according to the government’s Disaster Management Center. At least five people died after being buried in mudslides that overran two houses in the central region, while two others died in floods, said Pradeep Kodippili, the center’s spokesperson. Three others have been injured. He said 291 houses had been damaged and nearly 3,500 people have been evacuated. Navy and army personnel have been deployed to rescue those trapped in the floods. Local television channel Hiru TV showed troops and civilians rescuing people trapped by floodwaters in their homes or at risk of being buried by mudflows.” (08/04/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/sri-lanka-closes-some-schools-as-heavy-rains-22372863.php
- DiCaprio, Bezos Lead $200 Million Project to Save 100 of Globe’s Most Threatened Species
Source: US News & World Report
“Foundations funded and co-founded by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos have launched an initiative committing $200 million to revive 100 of Earth’s most threatened species, including endangered lemurs, salamanders, pangolins, pigs and echidnas. DiCaprio’s Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund are leading the Phoenix Species Project, the groups announced Tuesday. They call it the largest single fund in history dedicated exclusively to recovering critically endangered species.” (08/04/26)
- Red All Over? It’s Not So Black and White
Source: Garrison Center
by Joel Schlosberg“In the month celebrating 250 years of red, white and blue, Americans were seeing plenty of red — and not just as part of commemorative trifectas or midterm forecast maps.” (08/04/26)
- A Murder Spree Without End
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison“The boat strikes haven’t made a dent in the flow of drugs into this country, nor was there ever any reason to believe that they would. Combating drug trafficking was the official excuse to start the killing, but it was always just an excuse. In the last ten months, the campaign has taken on a life of its own. It makes no difference to the president or Hegseth that the campaign is a failure on its own terms. They are killing these people at least in part to show their contempt for the law and to prove that they won’t be bound by it. They are testing to see how far they can go before they encounter serious opposition. There is no sign that the administration will stop killing civilians at sea unless it is forced to.” (08/04/26)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/a-murder-spree-without-end
- The Constitution’s Forgotten Economic Tradeoffs
Source: The Daily Economy
by Antón Chamberlin“The Articles of Confederation are often remembered as a failure. But their limits on taxing and commercial power offered greater protection for economic freedom than the Constitution that replaced them.” (08/04/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-constitutions-forgotten-economic-tradeoffs/
- Why the Intelligent Forget the Obvious
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“Economics has a small stock of principles that a first-year student can recite and a Cabinet minister can forget within the hour. Incentives matter; Taxes change behaviour; Prices are signals. These are not obscure theorems. They are closer to proverbs, the kind of thing an intelligent teenager grasps within an afternoon. Yet politicians who could tell you the exact yield on a ten-year gilt will propose a policy that assumes people respond to subsidies but not to taxes, or that a price can be fixed by decree without anyone noticing. The puzzle is not that people are stupid. Despite obvious counter-examples, few politicians are. The puzzle is that intelligence and economic literacy are almost unrelated skills, and the political process actively selects against the second.” (08/04/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/why-the-intelligent-forget-the-obvious
- Trump’s tariffs are his biggest policy failure
Source: The Hill
by Merrill Matthews“After a stinging but widely expected loss at the U.S. Supreme Court, President Trump pressed his enablers to search, once again, for some law he could use to justify imposing new tariff rates on dozens of countries, both friends and foes alike. Yet no Trump policy has been a bigger economic and political failure than his tariffs, alienating other countries, harming U.S. businesses and, most importantly, enraging American voters.” (08/04/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/6006905-us-trade-deficit-tariffs/
- Five Lessons Learned From the Fauci Fiasco
Source: Town Hall
by Stephen Moore“COVID-19 was a traumatic experience for our families, small businesses, schools, and country. Understandably, people don’t like thinking or talking about it. But we must. We now know, thanks to Sen. Rand Paul’s doggedness and Anthony Fauci’s supreme arrogance, which he freely expresses in his diary, that almost every decision made by the medical-industrial complex was exactly the wrong thing to do. Fauci has blown himself up, and almost overnight he has gone from hero to antihero. Politicians and the media didn’t take note of the fact that Fauci had a track record of hysterical and erroneous predictions about viruses before — he was, for example, the public health official peddling the nonsense about heterosexual AIDS. Instead, when Fauci went on TV in front of tens of millions of Americans preaching Armageddon and contradicting everything Trump was saying, he became a saint. No wonder Fauci developed a god complex.” (08/04/26)
- College students aren’t becoming less polarized. They’re becoming less tolerant.
Source: Expression
by Chloe Ratner“The ideological tolerance gap on campus is shrinking, but not because students are becoming more open-minded. Rather, it appears they are becoming less tolerant across the board.” (08/05/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/college-students-arent-becoming-less
- Don’t Believe Todd Blanche About Trump’s Slush Fund From Hell
Source: The Bulwark
by Philip Rotner“The so-called “anti-weaponization fund” established as part of a purported settlement between President Trump and the IRS isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping. Don’t be fooled by the weasel-worded statements that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on the Department of Justice website and tweeted out late Sunday night. They are clearly intended to give a false impression that a stake has finally been driven into the fund’s heart. It hasn’t. Blanche posted two written statements on Sunday night, one that he calls an ‘order’ and one that he calls an ‘update.’ Let’s look at each of them in turn.” (08/04/26)
- Iran’s war … on its homefront
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“Ask an Iranian in Tehran these days how the war is going and you might get this response: Which war? The on-again, off-again war on Iran by U.S. President Donald Trump? Or the war inside Iran by a regime whose new fear campaign against its people appears to be backfiring? Since January, when Iran saw the largest unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, executions of political dissenters have surged. In late July, the regime escalated its intimidation tactics by holding the first public executions since 2022 – but not before a large crowd tried to stop the construction of gallows in a public square. Videos on social media show security forces in the central city of Isfahan chasing protesters before two young men were hanged.” (08/03/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0803/Iran-s-war-on-its-homefront
- Brexit, Ten Years On
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler“In the run-up to the UK’s referendum on EU membership in June 2016, extravagant claims were made by both the Remain and Leave campaigns. Leaving the EU, the so-called Remainers warned, would propel the UK into recession and mass unemployment. Brexiteers, as they were dubbed, countered with promises of enhanced sovereignty, tighter borders, and liberation from Brussels’s stifling bureaucracy. The latter won the Brexit vote (as it came to be known) by 52% to 48%. But just over a decade on from that historic decision—and six and a half years since the UK officially left the bloc—it’s less clear whether they also won the argument.” (08/04/26)
- Fauci’s legacy of lies paved the way for RFK Jr. and his conspiracy theories
Source: New York Post
by Isaac Schorr“Opposite every outrageous pronouncement from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the long shadow of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the formerly canonized COVID-era hero who has already been stripped of his sainthood. The lifelong liberal conspiracy theorist who endorsed President Donald Trump to secure a job in his administration sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash for an explosive interview on Sunday, just a few days after Fauci spent the entirety of a Senate Homeland Security Committee meeting pleading the Fifth Amendment. Yin and yang, but both incompetent and ruinous. Fauci’s sins are both too grave to exaggerate and too many to enumerate in full. The ex-NIAID director and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden sought to undermine the lab leak theory of Covid’s origins publicly even as he contemplated it privately.” (08/03/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/08/03/opinion/faucis-legacy-of-lies-paved-the-way-for-rfk-jr/
- Anatomy of Total Failure
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Harvey Risch“What America saw in the Senate hearing of Anthony Fauci on Wednesday is the end state of the toxic paternalism of an incompetent bureaucracy. The numerous discrepancies between Fauci’s diary entries and his public pronouncements over the Covid-19 pandemic were not just self-protection coverup of his earlier disastrous decisions. They reflect the standard model of public health administration: we know better than you how to manage a pandemic, and in fact we know it so well that we refuse to discuss any of it and instead use censorship and smear of contrary expertise and coercion rather than persuasion to effect our policies.” (08/04/26)
- ALL Mainstream Western Institutions View Palestinian Lives As Worthless
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorizing a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth ten million Palestinian lives. ‘I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,’ lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC. ‘It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,’ replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview. ‘Million,’ Shimon corrected her. ‘One Jewish life, it’s ten million, okay?’ ‘That just sounds racist,’ Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, ‘Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.'” (08/04/26)
- Why Do Americans Continue to Hew to Statism?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“One of the things that has fascinated me ever since I founded The Future of Freedom Foundation is why so many Americans continue to hew to statism. After all, just look around us. The statist systems that 20th-century Americans brought into existence have brought us a life of constant chaos, crisis, war, conflict, hostility, monetary debauchery, massive taxation, death, suffering, tyranny, and oppression. … Who can possibly be pleased with the results of these deadly and destructive systems? Yet, most Americans continue to hew to them. Why?” (08/04/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/08/04/why-do-americans-continue-to-hew-to-statism/
- A “Trump Account” HSA?
Source: Law & Liberty
by James Hankins“The accounts could show the way to get the government out of healthcare.” (08/04/26)
- War With Iran: A Double-Edged Sword for the US Economy and Agriculture
Source: Antiwar.com
by Greg Pence“The sharp swings in oil prices following the latest round of attacks and negotiations over safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that wars do not always reveal themselves first on the battlefield. Sometimes, their earliest signs appear on gas-station price boards, in transportation bills, and on the balance sheets of farmers standing thousands of miles from the front lines. Now that the confrontation between the United States and Iran has moved beyond pressure and deterrence and turned into direct military conflict, the issue is no longer limited to security calculations. It is about the real costs of war – costs increasingly borne by American farmers, truck drivers, and consumers.” (08/04/26)
- Cato Podcast, 08/04/26
Source: Cato Institute
“Iran: Schrodinger’s War.” (08/04/26)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/iran-schrodingers-war
- Trump Watch, 08/04/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Trump’s Tar Baby Is Expanding and Strengthening.” (08/04/26)
- The Bryan Hyde Show, 08/04/26
Source: The Bryan Hyde Show
“Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos joins me for our weekly debrief. No matter how crazy things may get or how ridiculous the things we’re expected to believe, we always have options.” (08/04/26)
- Rising, 08/04/26
Source: The Hill
“Trump still pushing J6 slush fund despite Blanche axing it: Niall Stanage” (08/04/26)
- Speech on UAPs at the Organization of American States in Panama
Source: Cobden Centre
“I [Max Rangeley] gave this speech at the Organization of American States in Panama, at the USA House. I talk through this fascinating topic from the perspective of evidence-based policy.” (08/04/26)
- TechTank, season 5, episode 46
Source: Brookings Institution
“AI and toddlers: The impacts on early development.” (08/04/26)
https://shows.acast.com/tech-tank/episodes/ai-and-toddlers-the-impacts-on-early-development
- The Good Fight, 08/04/26
Source: Yascha Mounk
“Daron Acemoglu on Why Liberalism Became a Victim of Its Own Success.” (08/04/26)